No other generation of record matches the children now arriving on the Earth plane. Noted historians, William Strauss and Neil Howe, authors of Generations: The History of America’s Future, 1584 to 2069 (William Morrow, New York City, 1991), put this into perspective for those of us in the US by identifying the children born between 1982 and around 2003 as the nation’s fourteenth or “millennial generation” – the most wanted, nurtured, and educated group of individuals we’ve ever produced, and the most protected by law. Unusually smart and assertive, these youngsters are as creative and intuitive as they are computer literate.

Not confined to the US, this emergence of new kids is truly global, as this observation from Mexican pediatrician, Ibarra Chavez, attests: “The new crop of infants are coming in more aware... eyes focused and alert, necks strong, lying in bassinets no bigger than chickens, and with a knowing-ness I cannot describe [in Spanish or English]. They are very special babies, this new crop.”

Sharon Begley, author of the Newsweek magazine article entitled “The IQ Puzzle” (May 6, 1996), describes the situation this way: “IQ scores throughout the developed world have soared dramatically since the tests were introduced in the early years of this [the 20th] century... The rise is so sharp that it implies that the average school child today is as bright as the near-geniuses of yesteryear.”

The gene pool cannot change fast enough to account for this leap, so we can’t claim genetics as causal. Test scores rose only slightly in the area of rote schooling, so education isn’t the cause either. Trying to make sense of the situation, experts have surmised young people today are simply better at taking tests – or – maybe it’s because they’re better nourished, or have larger vocabularies (thanks to permissive parenting), or play a lot of video games (which demand concentration before response).

The scurry to find answers to what is happening to our youth centres around one glaring fact: the extreme jump in intelligence, between 24 to 26 points, concerns “nonverbal intelligence” – the ability to know or intuit information. This means the new children are natural “creative problem solvers.” Yet in the area of genius, once ranked with scores between 134 to 136 points (some say 140), a preponderance of today’s youth regularly test out at 150 to 160; many over 184. No precedent exists to explain this.

The anomaly in IQ scores immediately caught my eye because it exactly reflected what I was finding with child experiencers of near-death states. The more sources I studied, the more professionals I interviewed, the more confident I became that humankind’s long predicted quantum leap in evolution was happening right now, and on several fronts: kids being born “different,” and children “changed” either because of an intensely powerful life event or from an encounter with the “power punch” that best describes the impact of a near-death or otherworldly experience.

Although my research of the near-death phenomenon didn’t begin until 1978 (the year after my own experiences), I actually began tracking the impact of consciousness transformations, especially with children, back in 1966. Five books cover the findings from my research: Coming Back To Life, Beyond The Light, Future Memory, Children Of The New Millennium, and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Near-Death Experiences [Editor’s Note: P.M.H. Atwater’s Children of the New Millennium has just been republished under the title The New Children and Near-Death Experiences, and is available in Australia from New Dawn Book Service for $34.95 plus $4.95 p&h].

Let’s explore this issue, at least to the extent that we can here, by identifying various traits and characteristics being noticed in these newcomers, and then let’s discuss the critical issue of timing.

Many people are aware of the discoveries made by authors Lee Carroll and Jan Tober that are detailed in their book The Indigo Children: The New Kids Have Arrived. Their interview with Nancy Ann Tappe, for instance, highlighted how technologically oriented she has found the new generation to be; how unusually confident, fearless, and strong they are, with quick, active minds and a non-attached, almost objective way of regarding the world around them (which enables them to be innovators or killers with equal ease). She claims they are influenced most by the colour vibration of indigo (the sixth frequency in the colour spectrum), since that is what she sees around them psychically.

Drunvalo Melchizedek, a self-realised mystic, echoed many of Tappe’s observations during an interview he had with Diane Cooper about “Children of the New Dream,” held on June 22, 1999. Only he went further by explaining that, in his view, there are three different types of children now emerging: those in China who are super psychics, the indigo children, and kids born with AIDS. He describes the Chinese youngsters as “psychic beyond belief.” He says they have scored 100% on every test given to them, no matter what kind of test it was or how difficult. This has puzzled their parents, who often lament, “I have a kid who knows everything – what do I do about this?” He reports such children are now showing up in Russia and the United States, and that these super psychics are similar to the indigo children.

But what excites Drunvalo the most are the AIDS kids. “About 10 or 11 years ago in the US,” he offers as an example, “there was a baby born with AIDS. They tested him at birth and at 6 months and he tested positive for AIDS. They tested him a year later and he still tested positive. Then they didn’t test him again until he was 6, and what was amazing is that this test showed he was completely AIDS free! In fact, there was no trace he ever had AIDS or HIV whatsoever!”

He goes on to reveal that, in close monitoring by medical researchers at University of California/Los Angeles, the discovery has been made that youngsters like this particular boy exhibit a unique DNA patterning no one else has – 24 active codons. (In human DNA the world over, 20 of the 64 different patterns or codons are “turned on” and active, 3 operate like “stop/start” codes similar to a computer, while the rest remain inactive.) The children with 24 active codons, instead of the usual 20, have shown resistance to disease that is quite remarkable. They seem to be immune to everything. Drunvalo believes this DNA advancement heralds “the end of disease” in that anyone, by choosing to align with unity and interconnectedness as the kids do, can achieve the same result.

Gordon-Michael Scallion, a psychic futurist and prophet, has for several years spoken of the children who resonate to the blue vibration, detailing his insights in Notes From The Cosmos (Matrix Institute, West Chesterfield, NH, 1997). To identify the new ones, he looks for: cat-like eyes that can readily adjust to differences in lighting and colours; vision that is both physical and non-physical; communication and language versatility; a bluish tint to the skin or the presence of blue around them; heightened body sensitivity/digestion; increased longevity – maybe up to 200 years of age. He feels the colour vibrations of blue, indigo, and violet will take on great importance throughout the third millennium.

Despite some variance in messages about today’s children, the traits most commonly mentioned dovetail what I have found in the fieldwork I’ve conducted. Children of the New Millennium examines the near-death phenomenon from the child experiencer’s viewpoint and, in so doing, turns upside down some of our pet notions not only about near-death states, but about the power of major transformational events to change individuals both psychologically and physiologically.

I have observed, for instance, that the younger the child the greater the effect – perhaps because the “power punch” experienced (above and beyond any imagery, visitations, or lights) can happen during critical junctures in brain development. Some characteristics displayed afterward:

NOTE: I found no statistical difference between males and females as regards enhanced intelligence, spatial, and mathematical abilities. Although percentages shown are based on questionnaire results, they reflect what I have consistently observed with the 277 child experiencers in my study – with one exception. Professional employment in math/science/history rises to 40% if you include those who did not fill out the questionnaire with those who did (which is still substantially below interest level and proficiency).

Whether the child experiencer was still young, a teenager, or in varied stages of adulthood when I interviewed him or her, I noticed that after the near-death episode was over the individual’s learning ability reversed; instead of continuing on with the normal developmental curve, from concrete (details) to abstract (concepts), he or she returned immersed in broad conceptual reasoning styles and had to learn how to go from abstract back to concrete.

Example: A young boy halfway through the first grade drowned, had a near-death episode, revived, then returned to school once recovered. No longer interested in “See Spot run,” he became fascinated with Greek mythology and wanted to know the reason why the book Moby Dick had been written. His shocked teacher was unable to handle his “change.” The most oft-repeated phrase child experiencers said to me was, “I felt like an adult in a child’s body.” Although adult experiencers usually become more child-like afterward, I have noticed that kids are just the opposite – they come back more mature.

Years of discussing my findings with scientists, physicians, educators, and parents, have convinced me that near-death states are evolutionary by nature, and their evolutionary aspects are the most readily apparent in child experiencers. For the young, shifts of this magnitude constitute what appears to be a “second birth.” I offer you the following:

Elements Of a Second Birth

• Those hardly born can undergo a second birth.

• Temporal lobe expansion in the brain can precede or accelerate normal development.

• An awareness of future that emerges can clarify the Earth world of time and space by engendering “rehearsals” – that provide for advance preparation in meeting life demands.

• Sensing in multiples can open up whole new worlds of possibility and new dimensions of what is real.

• Shifts in the brain can jump-start the engine of evolution, enabling the individual to adapt to ever-changing needs and pressures of his or her internal and external environments.

• Shifts in spiritual awareness can redirect attitudes/behaviours toward social justice and moral integrity, as compassion replaces the obsessions that drive greed.

• The higher mind can surface from the developing higher brain – as structural, chemical, and functional changes in the brain couple with a realignment of the heart to produce a brain shift/spirit shift.

Anyone who goes through a transformation of consciousness, no matter what the cause or under what condition, displays virtually the same aftereffects as do near-death experiencers. And the same brain shift/spirit shift. That’s why I no longer consider near-death states to be a separate phenomenon but, rather, part of that larger genre classified as transformational states.

In making this statement, I want to recognise the research of experts in the field of giftedness, who work with children who are “different.” One of these is Michael M. Piechowski, who writes at length in professional journals about the behaviour of children who are or who become spiritually attuned. He points out they display an unusual creative spontaneity, have an inner conviction of other realities, see everything as alive and interconnected, know they are not limited by physical existence, have boundless energy, are joyous, confident, not as easily swayed by adults, and possess non-ordinary consciousness.

Sound familiar? We’re all basically saying the same thing because what is happening is accelerating to such a degree across populations that it is undeniable.

Children are twice as likely to experience a near-death state as an adult when faced with a life-threatening situation. Thanks to high technology, greater numbers of these kids are being resuscitated... the vast majority of which return “rewired and reconfigured” for... high technology.

Coincidence? I don’t think so. Today’s children are either being born this way or becoming this way. Society, quite literally, is being provided with the very citizens it needs to people the emerging global village, and exactly on time. Humankind, as a species, is taking a quantum leap – now!

The famous American psychic Edgar Cayce supplied a strong, albeit brief, indication of this timing in, when he said:

“With the storehouse, or record house (where the records are still to be uncovered), there is a chamber or passage from the right forepaw [of the Sphinx] to this entrance of the record chamber, or record tomb. This may not be entered without an understanding, for those that were left as guards may NOT be passed until after a period of their regeneration in the Mount, or the fifth root race begins.” (Reading 5748-6, question 17)

The indication given was that a major evolutionary event had to happen before anyone could be “readied” to find this chamber, and that event, along with Earth changes, was the coming of the fifth root race. Timing, as stated previously by Cayce in other readings, covered the years between 1998 and 2010.

Cayce was never queried as to what the term “root races” meant. Still, he did refer to the subject in two other readings:

“How was this begun? Who was given that this should be a record of man’s experiences in this root race? For that is the period covered by the prophecies in the pyramid. This was given to Ra and Hermes in that period during the reign of Araaraart when there were many who sought to bring to man a better understanding of the close relationship between the Creative Forces and that created, between man and man, and man and his Maker.” (5748-6, para. 4)

“(Q) Any other suggestions, counsel or advice on this project? (A) Do consider it seriously. It is the basis of any undertaking that is worth while. It may not only become a local but a statewide and a national movement in ways and means as to insure [ensure] the meeting of the problems when there is peace again in the land, and also insuring [ensuring] the better products for a better people. You expect a new root race. What are you doing to prepare for it? You must prepare food for their bodies as well as their minds and their spiritual development.” (470-35, Q. 26)

Other visionaries and psychics before him did use the phrase, and to describe species-wide mutations or advancements in the human family (“root” referring to “foundational” or “root stock”). Among such esoteric understandings of root races was the one established by the Theosophical Society during the early 1920s. C.W. Leadbeater wrote at length about such changes or leaps in the development and refinement of humankind in his book The Masters and The Path (Theosophical Publishing House, Madras, India, 1925), as did Lieut.-Colonel Arthur E. Powell in The Solar System (same publisher and place, 1930).